a large chunk of England’s batting line-up once again committed sporting seppuku and yet still finished the day on 325/9 🤷 in other news Mitchell Starc has 16 wickets in the series at an average of *9* and there’ve been only 3 days of play

wait this *isn’t* a Craig Brown-penned parody?!?

the start-time of the 2nd Test at the “Gabbatoir” tomorrow matches my waking-up time in Astana perfectly and online coverage will accompany me as I wade through the final deluge of marking what will cause me greatest despair - Zac Crawley or AI-slop? we shall see!

I have absolutely no idea what the first refers to but the second is because this was the year I discovered Metal is *the* music to grade to

according to Spotify my listening age is *checks notes* 69 because I basically listen to a lot of early 70s Boomers

Not to sound like a stuck record, but '400 jobs to be lost in city as car plant/steel works/aerospace facility closes' would be treated somewhat differently, I suspect.

in the UK every season is silly season when Labour are in government

anyway I read more of the casebook of Inspector Hanshichi this evening and I’d like nothing better than to flounce around in Edo solving crimes youtu.be/d6vbZVz-Gag?...

sat in a norming meeting today where we discussed a paper that was obviously partly or even wholly AI-generated and I was the only one who brought this up why are we even doing this anymore? 🤷

this song and the video have been an ear-worm for months and only just now have I been able to ID it and they’re not huge?!? youtu.be/oOrU0DVlB6c?...

Could you take a minute and listen to this song I've written? You might like to cover it.

another thing on my Japan To-do list is my favorite record-store which curates and gifts to customers its end-of-year compilation *on CD* with photocopy insert and handwritten labels and everything 🤩

And the forum has been cancelled on orders from the Kyrgyz security services. Discussing the legacy of Russian colonialism is off limits in Kyrgyzstan

I was outside academia when ChatGPT-3 changed the game and I heard the stories from within from former colleagues and I was relieved not to be there in their shoes now I’m back in the game and it’s horrendous just every day horrendous

This

Them: no more messy foreign interventions! Also them: lol psych!

classes are over and now we’re into grading final papers and totting-up season and I can finally set my alarm clock back by an hour or so which obviously means I’m up during the wee hours of a Monday morning translating Chagatai poetry *for fun* 👀

the UXD and back-end of Moodle is so janky I’ve gone back to calculating grades in excel because also the interface with perusal is so bad grades get lost in transition and remind me again why we are being compelled to use ANY OF THIS in our teaching 🤷

my partner is outside academia and I was describing to her the varieties of AI-usage I encounter both declared and undeclared and she was utterly appalled I use apps licensed for use on campus and AI is embedded within them it’s appalling utterly appalling

the first serious academic thing I ever wrote was on the Yasaviyya and specifically what Navayi says about them in his anthology of saints’ lives Nasayimul-mahabbat

This

in 2020 I was in Bishkek for the elections and protests and overthrow of Zheenbekov and the installation of Japarov I do hope these elections pass off peacefully even though they are an obvious sham

69 Love Songs ♥️

A nice, refreshing glass of fags in the excellent 1969 Man Alive doc The Office Party on BBC iPlayer.

I wasn’t aware of *red* sweet potatoes but I never did do normie Thanksgiving

no lies detected

something positive at the end of a gruelling semester

this is what I need today

Brilliant just brilliant

I’ve picked up the stories of Inspector Hanshichi by Kido Okamoto again and like all crime fiction it’s absolutely perfect winter reading

academic colleagues can be weird which is not news I’m sure but … it’s the hella busy final week of classes and then grading period and only now are people issuing social invites left right and centre I just don’t have the energy or the patience

DINER JOURNALISM IS BACK ON THE MENU

In Bishkek, the embassy of Ukraine is right next to the new presidential palace (Palace of Unity) built under Japarov. During Putin’s official visit to the palace yesterday, the Kyrgyz authorities covered up the view of the Ukrainian embassy with a giant screen displaying KG and RU flags

These posters for the South Korean stage production of Macbeth are the greatest thing ever? #art

apparently having an affair with your gym-coach is called a “fituationship”

being organized and booking my haircut in Tokyo one month out

this thread 🧵 🙌

the week of consultations on final term-papers in lieu of classes is simultaneously my most exhausting and most rewarding week of the semester one 15min. session with each and every student and there are 55 of them that truly reveal to me whether or not my teaching has been effective

this is a really good explainer from @aijanco.bsky.social

potato and cabbage pirozhki based on a recipe from Caroline Eden’s superb ‘Green Mountains’ @edentravels.bsky.social

who else had a moment when they discovered that Adobe Acrobat contains an AI-fuelled add-on that will offer to summarise a pdf for you 😣

this happened to me this summer when a manuscript I reviewed for a journal included a load of AI-generated balderdash about stuff I HAD WRITTEN

anyway another case of Travis Head doing Travis Head stuff and the Poms have been well and truly stuffed

if Australia wrap this up today there’ll actually be time left for another Test

The people who say "why this obsession with Palestine? why don't you post about Sudan?" never post about Sudan themselves. What they mean is "it's fine you don't care about Sudan. You should be similarly indifferent to Palestine" (of course, many people do post about both and other crises)

I’ve been glancing through Harvard’s much-ballyhooed report about grading culture within their walls tl;dr pretty much everyone agrees that grade-inflation has devalued all grades and that grades themselves actually undermine rather than reinforce academic excellence

I think I’m going to cancel classes tomorrow because I have important matters to attend to www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricke...

I’d also say all the lanyard-wearing self-styled eco-warriors are part of the problem because they’re not doing a lick of work but they do get some good footage for their reels

the food of champions

let’s me tell you kids back in the day this was the OG appointment television